Ulrike A. Helmer was born in 1964 in the South of Holland, to a German mother and a Dutch father. Ever since her childhood she was interested in other cultures and youth and subcultures. She was a great music lover too. As a student in Utrecht she put a hobby to effect, working at a concert hall for many years, doing the lighting. Aged twelve, she got her first photo camera and started taking pictures and working in a dark room. After secondary school she went to Paris for a year. Back in Holland, while studying Cultural Anthropology, she discovered she didn’t want to look at the world in a scientific way. She switched to photography and film studies at the art academy. Gradually, she developed a cinematographic view of the world.
A great deal of her films concentrate on contemporary society and people’s struggles to conquer a place within it - as artists, writers, rappers, musicians or entrepreneurs. Her main characters are often underdog types and are seen trying to make small but significant changes in their own way. She has made a considerable number of documentaries about music, arts and youth culture in various countries across the world. For some years, she worked for the VPRO - Holland’s famously wayward broadcasting station. Her latest feature length documentary, “Dutch Touch”, focuses on hip hop culture and music in her own country. In her films she always aims to tell a story in a raw and impressionistic way, rather than in the traditionally journalistic and verbal way. Image, colour and sound are her essential ingredients. She approaches her topics as an anthropologist would, with an open eye and an open mind, trying to understand and explain from the inside out.
